Businesses and NGOs to the rescue with 40,000 loaves of bread and 40,000 litres of milk

As residents scrambled for food supplies due to unrest in Durban, at least 20 businesses and non-government organisations and non-profit organisations, including Muslims for Humanity and the Natal Memon Jamaat Foundation (NMJ), distributed 40,000 loaves of bread and 40,000 litres of milk to communities.

Muslims for Humanity chairperson Mohamed Gany said the plan to bring food supplies to Durban from Gauteng began on Tuesday.

By then numerous warehouses, factories and shops had been looted and torched throughout KwaZulu-Natal.

Gany said to avoid crowded distribution points, various community organisations and individual businesses in Durban had pooled resources to take the bread and milk into different communities from a central point in the city on Thursday.

SANZAP marketing co-ordinator Mohamed Riaz Fakie, who manned one of the distribution points on Thursday morning, said the organisations had been inundated with calls offering help from Gauteng.

“A last-minute decision had been taken to work together to load the much-needed foodstuffs on trucks headed for Durban.”

Fakie said businesses and community organisations in Gauteng had funded both the food and the private security contingent that had been needed to get the milk and bread to Durban from Gauteng safely.

Fakie said that it was hoped that the dire food shortages that were gripping the city in the wake of the destruction of retail outlets, factories and warehouses, could be resolved as soon as supply chains could be restored.

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